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"The Seventy-Four 'Scholars': Who Does the Jesus Seminar Really
Speak For?" (an article from the Book Reviews column from the
Christian Research Journal, Fall 1994, page 32) by Craig L.
Blomberg.
The Editor-in-Chief of the Christian Research Journal is
Elliot Miller.
-------------
*A Summary Critique*
A major new work of scholarship is raising eyebrows in many
quarters: _The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say?_
(Macmillan, 1993)[1] This is the product of six years of extensive
consultation by a group of scholars known as the Jesus Seminar
(hereafter JS), who have set out to determine the authentic words
of Jesus. The result is a book that (1) provides a fresh,
colloquial, and at times racy translation of the _five_ gospels
(Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, _and_ the noncanonical Gospel of
Thomas); (2) colors every saying attributed to Jesus in these
Gospels as either red, pink, gray, or black (_red_ means Jesus
said it; _pink_ means it's close to what He said; _gray_ means He
didn't say it in this form but there are echoes of His teaching in
it; and _black_ means the saying didn't come from Him at all); and
(3) provides passage-by-passage commentary explaining the JS's
rationale for its decisions. As the book jacket and popular press
releases emphasize, only _20 percent_ of all the sayings of Jesus
are colored red or pink and a good number of these come from
Thomas!
What is going on here? Has there been some revolutionary new
find that seriously discredits Christianity? No, not at all. The
truth is that the JS is an _anachronism_ -- a throwback to
nineteenth-century quests for the historical Jesus, and not even
representative of mainstream contemporary New Testament
scholarship.
_WHAT IS THE JESUS SEMINAR?_
The JS is the brainchild of well-known New Testament scholar
and Greek grammarian, Robert Funk -- for many years a professor at
the University of Montana. Desiring to write a book on the
historical Jesus as long ago as the 1970s, Funk wanted to
incorporate reflections that represented a scholarly "consensus."
He came up with the idea of assembling a team of scholars that
would vote on each saying of Jesus to create a new kind of
red-letter edition of the Gospels -- with only those sayings that
_really_ go back to Jesus colored red. In time the idea evolved
into four different colors, since historical assessments involve
varying degrees of probability.
As many as 200 scholars participated in the JS over the years,
but the final group dwindled to 74. People dropped out for various
reasons. Some expressed discomfort with how the most radical
fringes of New Testament scholarship were disproportionately
represented on the JS. Others voiced disagreement with Funk's
propagandistic purposes of popularizing scholarship in a way
designed explicitly to undermine conservative Christian
credibility.[2]
The final "Fellows" of the JS, as they are called, fall roughly
into three categories. Fourteen of them are among the leading names
in the field, including a few who have published major works on the
historical Jesus in recent years (e.g., John Dominic Crossan of
DePaul University and Marcus Borg of Oregon State). Two of these 14
are sympathetic to many evangelical concerns: Bruce Chilton (of
Bard College, New York) and Ramsey Michaels (of Southwest Missouri
State).
Roughly another 20 are names recognizable to New Testament
scholars who keep abreast of their field, even if they are not as
widely published. These, too, include several who have written
important recent works on the Jesus-tradition, particularly in
regard to various noncanonical gospels (e.g., Marvin Meyer of
Chapman University and Karen King of Occidental College).
The remaining 40 -- more than half of the JS -- are relative
unknowns; most have published at best two or three journal
articles, while several are recent Ph.D.s whose dissertations were
on some theme of the Gospels. A computer-search of the ATLA and
OCLC databases of published books and articles[3] turned up no
entries relevant to New Testament studies whatsoever for a full 18
of the Fellows.
Overall, the Jesus Seminar is composed of Protestants,
Catholics, and atheists, professors at universities and seminaries,
one pastor, three members of the Westar Institute in California
which sponsored the project, one filmmaker, and three others whose
current occupations are entirely unidentified. Of the 74 there are
three women and two Jews. Thirty-six, almost half, have a degree
from or currently teach at one of three schools -- Harvard,
Claremont, or Vanderbilt -- universities with some of the most
liberal departments of New Testament studies anywhere. Only a
handful come from outside North America; European scholarship is
almost entirely unrepresented. Among the less well-known names are
two or three additional evangelical sympathizers, but it is clear
they were consistently outvoted by the "far left."
_WHAT DID THE JESUS SEMINAR CONCLUDE?_
_The Five Gospels_ uses more black ink for the sayings of Jesus
than red, pink, and gray put together. Only 15 sayings of Jesus are
colored red -- and then not always in all the different versions in
which they appear in the various Gospel parallels. The red sayings
are all short, pithy "aphorisms" (unconventional proverb-like
sayings) such as, "turn the other cheek" (Matt. 5:39; Luke 6:29),
"congratulations, you poor" (Luke 6:20; Thomas 54), and "love your
enemies" (Luke 6:27; Matt. 5:44)[4] -- or parables (particularly
the more subversive ones) such as the Good Samaritan (Luke
10:30-35), the Shrewd Manager (Luke 16:1-8a), and the Vineyard
Laborers (Matt. 20:1-15). The only saying that appears in more than
two Gospels that was colored red each time was, "Pay to the emperor
what belongs to the emperor and God what belongs to God" (Matt.
22:21; Mark 12:17; Luke 20:25; Thomas 100:2). This was also the
only saying in the entire Gospel of Mark to be colored red.
Pink sayings are much more plentiful; an appendix lists 75. But
again they are almost entirely limited to short, unconventional
utterances such as one might expect from an Oriental sage or
cryptic guru. Most of these come from sayings paralleled either in
Matthew and Luke or in one of those Gospels plus Thomas. The gray
sayings are not indexed but appear about twice as often as the
pink. Indeed, the commentary explains that much of the gray matter
came very close to being pink in the voting. At times over half of
the Fellows voted red or pink, but the remaining black vote
resulted in a gray "compromise." Somewhat more than half of all the
teaching attributed to Jesus in the Gospels, however, remains
black, including virtually everything in the Gospel of John.
Sometimes longer passages are subdivided into various colors.
For example, in Matthew's version of the Lord's Prayer (Matt.
6:9-13), "Our Father" is red. "Your name be revered," "impose your
imperial rule," "provide us with the bread we need for the day,"
and "forgive our debts to the extent that we have forgiven those in
debt to us" are all pink. "And please don't subject us to test
after test" is gray, while "in the heavens," "enact your will on
earth as you have in heaven," and "but rescue us from the evil one"
are all black. In other instances, even though the commentary notes
that the Fellows found one part of a passage much more likely to be
authentic than another, the text is not subdivided but all colored
pink (red plus gray) or gray (pink plus black) -- for example, the
parable of the wedding banquet (Matt. 22:1-14). No explanation is
ever given for this inconsistency.
_EVALUATING THE JESUS SEMINAR'S WORK_
The Golden Rule ("Treat people in ways you want them to treat
you") gets only a gray coloring by the JS because it is potentially
self-centered. The real Jesus, we are told, would more likely have
said something like, "Treat people in the way they want to be
treated." Unfortunately, the JS did not apply this more "noble"
approach to the Jesus of the Gospels. But even by the logic of the
more "inferior" version of Matthew 7:12, it seems reasonable to
apply the same method of color-coding to the work of these Fellows
that they used on the five Gospels.
We shall therefore organize our critique under three headings:
(1) _red_ or _pink_ material -- that is, where almost all scholars
would agree that the JS is probably correct in their
presuppositions, methods, and conclusions; (2) _gray_ material --
that is, where the JS's approach reflects views widely held in
nonevangelical scholarship but suspect nevertheless; and (3)
_black_ material -- that is, where the JS is out of sync even with
the majority of nonevangelical New Testament scholarship. The
percentages of material that fall into each category correspond
roughly to the percentages of the various colors of ink that the JS
itself employed!
_Red or Pink Matter: Where the Jesus Seminar Speaks for Most Scholars_
No doubt at least 20 percent and perhaps a little more of what
the JS concludes is legitimate. Evangelical scholars widely agree
with critics of other persuasions that it is appropriate to employ
historical methods in analyzing the Gospel traditions. Christianity
is a religion that makes uniquely historical claims. If a majority
of the canonical Gospels' portraits of Jesus were unhistorical, the
theological claims of our faith could not stand. The type of
apologetics that requires belief as a presupposition for discussion
fails to convince any but the already converted. So it is entirely
appropriate to employ criteria of historical analysis that
believers and unbelievers can share and see if the Bible can
withstand such scrutiny.
In that light, we can agree with the JS and virtually all other
modern scholars that the Gospels are a complex product of tradition
and redaction. That is to say, the teachings of Jesus were not
written down when He first spoke them but were passed along by word
of mouth over a period of decades. In that process of oral
tradition, they were paraphrased, abbreviated, combined together in
small collections, applied to a wide variety of situations in the
early church, and ultimately put in the form in which we now find
them by the writers of the Gospels themselves. However, we believe
that all of this took place under the superintendence of the Holy
Spirit, and through His inspiration the writers accurately reported
exactly what He wanted them to represent of the life and teachings
of Jesus.
These writers functioned as "redactors" -- that is, editors --
choosing which teachings of Jesus they wanted to include, in what
order, and in keeping with the distinctive theological purposes
they considered most crucial for the Christian communities to which
they were writing. Mark was probably the first Gospel written.
Matthew and Luke each drew on Mark as well as probably on "Q" (from
the German _Quelle,_ meaning "source") -- a hypothesized document
composed primarily of teachings of Jesus (which explains why
Matthew and Luke have a lot of material in common not found in
Mark, but almost always limited to Jesus' sayings). John, however,
wrote later and more independently, accounting for the greater
differences between his Gospel and the previous three "synoptic"
Gospels.
This process of oral tradition plus written editorial activity
accounts for why virtually any saying of Jesus of any length that
is found in more than one Gospel does not appear word-for-word in
exactly the same form. So also does the fact that Jesus spoke in
Aramaic but the Gospels were written in Greek. Literal translation
from one language to another inevitably breaks down at numerous
points. The ancient world, moreover, had no symbol for quotation
marks and no conviction that a verbatim account of someone's speech
was any more or less valuable than an accurate paraphrase. Missing,
too, was any concept that _detached_ objectivity was somehow a
virtue for writers of history (although there _was_ a concern for
reporting facts faithfully and accurately [Luke 1:1-4]). What point
was there in telling the stories of the teachings and actions of
great individuals if not to learn something from their examples?
So we need have no objection in principle to the idea that some
of Jesus' teachings are fairly literal translations of His actual
words (red) and that others are more paraphrastic in nature (pink).
We can even accept some of the JS's reasons for coloring a saying
gray, as, for example, when it believes that the words of a saying
reflect a mixture of Jesus' wording and the later Gospel writer's
favorite vocabulary, _so long as the essence of the teaching is
faithful to Jesus' original intent._ (In many instances, however,
gray for the JS means that they find some part of a saying
objectionable and not consistent with Jesus' original speech.)
_Gray Matter: Where the Jesus Seminar Speaks Mostly for Liberal Scholars_
There are at least 10 important areas in which the JS adopts
assumptions and perspectives that are widely held in nonevangelical
scholarship but which need to be challenged. Those assumptions
include: (1) The authors of the four canonical Gospels are not
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as traditionally believed. (2) None
of these four Gospels were written before the fall of Jerusalem in
A.D. 70. (3) The oral tradition of Jesus' sayings was quite fluid.
Simple teachings were often greatly expanded, embellished, and
distorted in the process. (4) Various people in the early church,
including the Gospel writers themselves, felt free to invent
sayings of Jesus that had little or no basis in what He actually
taught. (5) If a saying can be demonstrated to promote later
Christian causes, it could not have originated with Jesus. (6) The
historicity of John's gospel is extremely suspect. (7) Historical
analysis cannot admit the supernatural as an explanation for an
event. Therefore, Jesus' words after His resurrection -- like His
earlier predictions about His death, resurrection, and return --
cannot be authentic. (8) Jesus never explained His parables and
aphorisms. All concluding words of explanation, especially
allegorical interpretations of parables and metaphors, are thus
inauthentic. (9) Jesus never directly declared who He was. All such
"self-referential" material (in which Jesus says, "I am..." or, "I
have come to...") is therefore also inauthentic. (10) The burden of
proof rests on any particular scholar who would claim authenticity
for a particular saying of Jesus and not on the skeptic.
Space obviously precludes a detailed response to each of these
10 claims. But we can at least sketch out the broad contours of a
reply.
(1) The external evidence (i.e., the testimony of the early
church) uniformly attributes authorship of the first three Gospels
to Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It is not likely that the church would
have ascribed two of these three Gospels to men who were not among
the original twelve apostles (Mark and Luke), and the other one to
the notorious ex-tax-collector (Matthew), unless there was strong
reason for believing them to be the original authors. Modern-day
objections to these ancient traditions have all been adequately
answered in a variety of published works.[5]
(2) The same external evidence suggests that Matthew and Mark
should be dated at least as early as the 60s. Internal evidence
places Luke in that time frame as well, since his second volume,
the Book of Acts, ends abruptly with Paul awaiting the outcome of
his appeal to the emperor in Rome. The best explanation of that
abrupt ending remains the assumption that Luke was writing while
Paul was still in house-arrest and hence no later than A.D. 62.
Early Christian tradition, on the other hand, puts John's gospel in
the 90s but usually attributes it to John the apostle, one of
Jesus' closest followers, so that here we have reputable eyewitness
testimony.
In each case, the four Gospels were most probably written by
people in a position to know and accurately preserve Jesus'
teaching -- Matthew and John because they had personally
accompanied Jesus; Luke because he had talked with eyewitnesses and
engaged in careful historical research (Luke 1:1-4); and Mark
(again according to the church fathers) because he had ministered
together with Peter in Rome (cf. also 1 Pet. 5:13).[6]
(3) Careful studies of ancient Jewish culture and surrounding
nations demonstrate that oral traditions held sacred were preserved
with remarkable care. The New Testament world was an oral culture,
producing prodigious feats of memory. Rabbis at times had memorized
the entire Scriptures (our Old Testament). Such abilities did not
preclude the freedom to retell stories with all kinds of minor
variation in detail so long as the point of each story or teaching
was left intact. The alleged tendency of traditions to develop from
simple to complex has been repeatedly refuted; if anything, there
was a slight tendency to abbreviate more lengthy narratives.[7]
(4) There is not a single piece of hard data demonstrating that
early Christians felt free to create out of whole cloth sayings of
Jesus which He never spoke. The most common way this assumption has
been defended is by the idea of prophecy: New Testament prophets
spoke in the name of the risen Lord and their words were allegedly
later intermingled with those of the historical Jesus. But while
such practices may have occurred with other gods or historical
figures in nearby cultures, every reference to the words of
Christian prophets inside and outside the New Testament canon makes
it clear that they were not confused with the words of the earthly
Jesus.[8]
(5) Although it is widely believed that theological motives
impugn historicity, such a belief rests on a patently false
dichotomy. As already noted, ancient history was not written
according to today's standards of scholarly detachment. If sayings
of Jesus relevant to the later church must be discounted, then so
must the words of the Roman historians Tacitus and Suetonius, and
the Jewish historian Josephus, when they help to promote Roman or
Jewish causes. In such cases, we would be left with almost total
agnosticism about ancient history, a conclusion few scholars are
prepared to promote.
The fallacy, of course, is to imagine that telling a story for
a purpose, even in service of a cause one believes in passionately,
necessarily forces one to distort history. In our modern era, some
of the most reliable reporters of the Nazi Holocaust were Jews
passionately committed to seeing such genocide never repeated. In
this case, it is the appalling later revisionism of those who
claimed the Holocaust never happened that has distorted history,
not the testimony of those passionately caught up in the events of
the time.[9]
(6) John is quite different than the Synoptics, but that does
not make him any less historical. Precisely because he is largely
independent of them, he has chosen to focus on different aspects of
Jesus' teaching and career. Interestingly, John actually has more
references to time and place -- including details about
first-century Palestine that have been strikingly corroborated by
archeology -- than do the Synoptics. I have elsewhere written in
greater detail about the differences among the four Gospels (and
the more general question of the historical reliability of the
Gospels) and I refer the reader to that more extensive
discussion.[10]
(7) Antisupernaturalism is historically reductionistic (i.e.,
overly limiting what may have actually happened) and
philosophically untenable. The historian may not personally be
convinced by the testimony of Jesus' disciples that they saw Him
alive again after His death. But that gives him or her no right to
color all sayings of the resurrected Jesus black (i.e., in Matthew
28, Luke 24, and John 20--21). This the JS did on the highly
debatable grounds that "words ascribed to Jesus after his death are
not subject to historical verification."
Since numerous credible eyewitnesses reported _seeing_ and
_hearing_ Jesus on several occasions, historical verification is
not really the problem. The problem rather is that _no_ evidence
for a resurrection will be satisfactory if one has concluded _a
priori_ that miracles cannot happen. But such a position is not
based in historical research but rather in philosophical bias. Thus
it provides no good basis for rejecting the words of the
resurrected Christ.
(8) Almost all rabbinic parables (of which over 2,000 have been
preserved) have some kind of allegorical explanation. It is hard to
believe, therefore, that Jesus the Jew did not give some kind of
indication as to what His more pithy and controversial teachings
meant. Indeed, the whole parable-allegory dichotomy is another
false one, and again I must refer the reader to my book-length
discussion of the matter for further detail.[11]
(9) It is inherently improbable that Jesus (or any other sage)
would never talk about Himself in the first person. The real reason
behind this claim is that many modern scholars are reluctant to
believe that Jesus made the specific claims for Himself which the
Gospels say He did. Often this is because they would then have to
come to grips with His claims _upon their lives_ -- demands that
they are not prepared to accept (e.g., "I am the way, and I am
truth, and I am life....No one gets to the Father unless it is
through me" -- John 14:6).[12]
(10) Applying the "believer's burden of proof" criterion to
historical inquiry in general would leave us with virtually no
secure knowledge of anything in the ancient world. It is flatly
contrary to the approach of ancient historians more generally, who
assume that if writers prove trustworthy where they can be tested,
they are given the benefit of the doubt where they cannot be
tested. Repeatedly the Gospel writers have proved themselves
reliable in this respect, so the burden of proof should fall
squarely on the skeptics' shoulders.
_Black Matter: Where the Jesus Seminar Speaks for Few Scholars_
Perhaps the most striking feature of _The Five Gospels_ is how
out of touch it is even with mainline scholarship. In fact, a major
movement among New Testament critics has generated what has been
dubbed "the third quest" for the historical Jesus. This quest has
been far more optimistic than its predecessors in claiming that
substantial amounts of material about what Jesus said and did can
be recovered from the canonical Gospels. Indeed, two of the major
contributors to this quest -- James Charlesworth of Princeton and
E. P. Sanders of Duke -- agree that "the dominant view today seems
to be that we can know pretty well what Jesus was out to
accomplish, that we can know a lot about what he said, and that
those two things make sense within the world of first-century
Judaism."[13]
It is this final clause that the JS virtually ignores. Their
Jesus does not make sense in the world of Judaism. Indeed, every
time Jesus looks too much like other Jewish teachers of His day,
His words are discounted as inauthentic for that very reason. The
JS's Jesus resembles a Greco-Roman philosopher; a cynic sage; an
itinerant speaker who never refers to Scripture, who never speaks
more than one short parable on any occasion, who engages in no
extended dialogues or controversies with the religious leaders of
His world.
The one historical fact that almost everybody agrees on -- that
Jesus was crucified -- finds no adequate explanation in the Jesus
that is left after the JS excises 80 percent of His teachings. As
leading Catholic scholar John Meier puts it in his much more
representative, recent work on the historical Jesus, "A tweedy
poetaster who spent his time spinning out parables and Japanese
koans, a literary aesthete who toyed with 1st-century
deconstructionism, or a bland Jesus who simply told people to look
at the lilies of the field -- such a Jesus would threaten no one,
just as the university professors who create him threaten no
one."[14]
On the other hand, the JS is far _more_ optimistic than most
scholars about the possibility of unearthing reliable, independent,
presynoptic traditions in the Gospel of Thomas. Their dating of
Thomas to about A.D. 50 is at least one century earlier than
anything the external evidence (or the majority of scholars)
supports. This noncanonical, apocryphal document is a collection of
114 sayings attributed to Jesus. About one-third of them are
clearly Gnostic in nature; about one-third are quite similar to
short aphorisms and parables of Jesus in the canonical Gospels; and
about one-third contain otherwise unknown teachings ascribed to
Jesus that are not demonstrably unorthodox but which could lend
themselves to Gnostic interpretations.
Many scholars have often wondered if a few sayings of Jesus in
Thomas might reflect independent, authentic traditions not
previously known. But most scholars believe a majority of the
sayings reflect a later stage of the tradition, when a concern for
special wisdom and elitist knowledge outstripped the concerns of
the original Jesus.[15]
The JS implausibly inverts this sequence. Instead of an
apocalyptic Jesus teaching about a future kingdom that is now at
hand -- heralding the arrival of a messianic age and fulfilling the
hopes of the children of Israel, as twentieth-century scholarship
has predominantly stressed -- the Fellows' Jesus speaks only of a
present, timeless kingdom and merely offers wise advice about how
to live at peace in a hostile world. Any hint of apocalyptic is
assigned to a secondary stage of the tradition.
This Jesus is more Gnostic -- concerned primarily to impart
true knowledge -- than anything orthodox Christianity has ever
accepted. Today we might call it "New Age." But given the JS's
stated goal of discrediting orthodox Christianity and going beyond
mainstream scholarship (despite their repeated claims that they
represent a consensus), this conclusion should not be
surprising.[16]
There are numerous other ways in which the JS is idiosyncratic
even among nonevangelical scholars. We have room merely to list ten
of them here; the implausibility of most of the following positions
should be obvious. (1) The JS's methodology is highly
reductionistic: no teaching that cannot be separated from the
narrative in which it is embedded (i.e., which could not have
circulated by itself in the oral tradition) can be authentic. (2)
No teaching that is neither a parable nor an aphorism can be
authentic. (3) Anything with parallels in the "common lore" of the
day is suspect; somebody else probably falsely attributed it to
Jesus. (4) Jesus said nothing, however implicitly, to suggest a
messianic consciousness (not even a merely human messianic
consciousness). (5) Hence, Jesus never used the title "Son of man,"
even though this passes all other criteria of authenticity with
flying colors as the most distinctive and characteristic way in
which Jesus spoke about Himself. (6) Almost all of the passion
narrative sayings are colored black, since Jesus spoke nothing
about His death or its significance. (7) Jesus never taught
anything about final judgment or threatened people with God's
wrath. (8) He never debated with anybody, never preached sermons,
never compared His teaching with what was found in the Law. (9) Our
current Gospels are relatively arbitrary in the order in which they
arrange Jesus' teachings. (10) Nevertheless, other historical
sources from antiquity are quoted (e.g., Josephus on Jesus son of
Ananias and on Eleazar the exorcist) as if they can be trusted
implicitly. And in one place, based on no allegedly historical
information of any kind -- inside or outside the canon -- the
Fellows "regard it as probable that [Jesus] had a special
relationship with at least one woman, Mary of Magdala," so that
they doubt Jesus was celibate![17]
_THE FALSE CLAIM OF A CONSENSUS_
The JS claims to represent a consensus of "critical" scholars
-- that is, scholars whose conclusions are not already
predetermined by religious confessions. In claiming such a
consensus they are highly misleading. Adela Yarbro Collins, a
leading New Testament scholar at the University of Chicago, wryly
noted in a recent meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature
that at some of the proceedings of the JS, two of its leaders would
get together and, whenever they would agree on an opinion, they
would announce to the rest: "There is a consensus among
scholars..."!
We have noted above numerous ways in which the JS reflects the
"radical fringe" of critical scholarship and generally does not
include the most established scholars of a more moderate
perspective. Once it is admitted that evangelical scholars can also
be "critical" and not allow their beliefs to predetermine their
historical conclusions (an admission the JS is unwilling to make),
it becomes clear that the JS's claims to represent consensus views
on more than a small percentage of the issues they address are
simply false.
_NOTES_
1 Ed. Robert W. Funk and Roy W. Hoover.
2 _See_ Robert W. Funk and Mahlon H. Smith, _The Gospel of Mark:
Red-Letter Edition_ (Sonoma, CA: Polebridge, 1991), xvi-xvii.
3 The January 1993 CD-ROM of the American Theological Library
Association indexes all articles in journals or multi-author
works listed in _Religion Index One and Two,_ a standard index
of articles in the field. The On-Line Computer Library Center
(OCLC) is the comprehensive database of books available for
interlibrary loan in North America, including all major
theological libraries.
4 All translations of gospel portions come from the JS's
"Scholars, Version," not least to give the reader a feel for the
nature of that translation.
5 Conveniently summarized, e.g., in the relevant sections of
textbooks such as D. A. Carson, Douglas J. Moo, and Leon Morris,
_An Introduction to the New Testament_ (Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
1992).
6 _See_ Robert H. Gundry, _Matthew: A Commentary on His Literary
and Theological Art_ (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 599-622;
idem, _Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross_ (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 1026-45; Colin J. Hemer, _The Book of
Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History_ (Tubingen: Mohr,
1989), 308-410; Leon Morris, _Studies in the Fourth Gospel_
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1969), 45-92.
7 By far the most important study of these features of the oral
tradition is Rainer Riesner, _Jesus als Lehrer_ (Tubingen: Mohr,
1981), unfortunately never translated into English. _See_ his
"Jesus as Preacher and Teacher," in _Jesus and the Oral Gospel
Tradition,_ ed. Henry Wansbrough (Sheffield: JSOT, 1991),
185-216. _See_ also Kenneth E. Bailey, "Informal Controlled Oral
Tradition," _Asia Journal of Theology 5_ (1991), 34-54; and
Leslie R. Keylock, "Bultmann's Law of Increasing Distinctness,"
in _Current Issues in Biblical and Patristic Interpretation,_
ed. Gerald F. Hawthorne (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 193-210.
8 _See_ David Hill, _New Testament Prophecy_ (London: Marshall,
Morgan & Scott, 1979); and David E. Aune, _Prophecy in Early
Christianity and the Ancient Mediterranean World_ (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1983).
9 One of the best discussions of how a gospel can be _both_
history _and_ theology remains I. Howard Marshall, _Luke:
Historian and Theologian_ (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1970, rev.
1989).
10 Craig L. Blomberg, _The Historical Reliability of the Gospels_
(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1987).
11 Craig L. Blomberg, _Interpreting the Parables_ (Downers Grove,
IL: InterVarsity Press, 1990).
12 Cf., e.g., the candid admissions of Burton L. Mack, _The Lost
Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins_ (San Francisco:
HarperCollins, 1993), 245-58. Mack was not one of the final
Fellows of the JS but his writing closely reflects their
distinctive approach to Jesus.
13 E. P. Sanders, _Jesus and Judaism_ (London: SCM, 1985), 2;
quoted by James H. Charlesworth, _Jesus within Judaism_ (New
York: Doubleday, 1988), 205.
14 John P. Meier, _A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical
Jesus,_ vol. 1 (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 177.
15 The two most detailed studies defending this conclusion are both
in German: Wolfgang Schrage, _Das Verhaltnis des
Thomas-Evangeliums zur synoptischen Tradition und zu den
koptischen Evangelienubersetzungen_ (Berlin: TUpelmann, 1964);
and Michael Fieger, _Das Thomasevangelium: Einleitung, Kommentar
und Systematik_ (Munster: Aschendorff, 1991). More briefly, but
in English, cf. Christopher M. Tuckett, "Thomas and the
Synoptics," _Novum Testamentum 30_ (1988), 132-57; and Meier,
123-39.
16 Funk's agenda becomes obvious when he expresses disappointment
that the JS colored only a handful of unparalleled sayings in
Thomas pink. He is obviously not wanting to reflect an existing
consensus but to move beyond it to bold, new historical
judgments. _See_ especially _Five Gospels,_ 524-25.
17 _Ibid.,_ 221.
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End of document, CRJ0183A.TXT (original CRI file name),
"The Seventy-Four 'Scholars': Who Does the Jesus Seminar Really
Speak For?"
release A, November 10, 1994
R. Poll, CRI
(A special note of thanks to Bob and Pat Hunter for their help in
the preparation of this ASCII file for BBS circulation.)
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